Latest / Crime Night / She Wrote His Name in Blood

Transcript

She Wrote His Name in Blood · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture this.
• 0:00
  Speaker 2: It is a completely quiet August evening back in two
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: thousand and eight. The air in rural Kentucky is just
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: you know, it's thick and still. Like imagine you are
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: inside this locked, dimly lit utility.
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: Room, right, So it's a very specific, eerie tone. Yeah.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: And there is a woman, let's call her Linda. She
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: is lying perfectly still in a pile of towels. She
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: is bleeding profusely from a wound across her throat, oh
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: my god, sliced completely from ear to ear. And she
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: is using every single ounce of her willpower to do
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: just one thing, to play dead exactly.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: She plays dead.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: She lies there, barely breathing, just listening to the sound
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: of running water, because he is right there. Yeah, he
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: is at the utility sink right above her, casually washing
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: his hands, washing his knife.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: That's just terrifying.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: She waits until she is absolutely certain he has left
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: the house, and then, I mean, running on pure adrenaline
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: and just a primal survival instinct, she uses her very
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: last bit of strength. She reaches up with her finger
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: and she uses her own blood to scrawl his name
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: on the wall, Ernest Pine.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, it is such a visceral, cinematic moment of
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: pure survival. The sheer presence of mind it takes to
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: leave that kind of definitive, undeniable sign for the police
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: while you are literally bleeding out on the floor. It
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: is staggering.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to today's deep dive everyone. We have pulled a
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: massive stack of gripping case files, original interrogation transcripts, and
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: true crime field reports specifically for you today.
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of material here, a ton.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Our mission today is to take you inside a notorious
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: home invasion that unspools a much much darker thread. We
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: are connecting a supposedly normal neighborhood family man to a
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: chilling sixteen year old cold case.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: Which is just wild when you look at the.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Details, completely wild. Okay, let's unpack this. We have to
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: look past the surface here. We need to understand how
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: someone with a completely mundane exterior can inflict absolute horror
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: on a neighbor and how the legal system processes or
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: honestly fails to process that kind of predator.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: To really understand the mechanics of this, you have to
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: look at the environment. The community surrounding Rough River Lake
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: in Kentucky, in two thousand and eight. Is well, it's
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: the definition of a false sense of security.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Right, because it's so isolated.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: Exactly, it is an hour away from any major city.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: It has that classic you know, we don't lock our
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: doors energy. Everyone knows everyone.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: So let's establish the timeline. It is August twenty fifth,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: just past seven point zero pm.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: It is still light out, yeah, still early evening.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Linda is at home. She is babysitting her twenty two
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: month old granddaughter who is asleep on the couch. There
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: is a knock at the door. She answers it, and
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: it is her neighbor, Ernest Pine.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: Now what's fascinating here isn't just the eventual violence, It
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: is the psychology of the setup. He doesn't just kick
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: the door.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Down, well, he knocks.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: He knocks and uses a highly specific, perfectly calibrated excuse.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: He tells Linda he wants to talk to her husband
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: about building a boat.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Dock, which makes sense to her, right.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: Because Linda's husband happens to be an engineer. So to Linda,
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: this is a complempletely plausible, entirely mundane, neighborly request.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Wait, I struggle to understand this from a tactical standpoint, though,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: why even bother with the conversation, Like, if his intend
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: is to attack her, why give her the opportunity to
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: say her husband is right behind her or that she's busy.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Because he is testing the waters while weaponizing our deeply
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: ingrained social contracts.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Oh I see, we are.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: Conditioned by society to trust a neighbor asking a simple
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: relevant question. By hiding behind that pleasantry, he bypasses all
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: of her natural alarm systems. He is gathering intelligence without
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: raising any suspicion.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: So Linda tells him her husband isn't home, but that
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: he'll be back in about.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Half an hour, which is the worst thing she could say.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: She just unwittingly gave him his window of opportunity exactly.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: Ernest smiles, seems totally satisfied with that answer, and he
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: literally turns around to leave.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: And that physical pivot is crucial, right.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: It is everything. Yeah, he gives it the universal physical
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: cue that the interaction is over. At that exact moment,
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: her guard drops to absolute zero. She goes to close
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: the door, and that is the exact split second he
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: violently forces his way inside.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Suddenly, this completely mundane evening just shatters. She has the
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: butt of a point two two caliber handgun pressed to
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: her head and he is whispering in her ear. Turn around,
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: you were going to die.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: It escalates instantly.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: He immediately pulls out a six inch hunting knife and
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: a handful of zip ties. I mean this was not
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: a crime of passion. Yeah, this was a predator clocking
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: in for a shift. He brought zip ties and a
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: knife to a boat dock.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Conversation, and Linda realizes instantly that she can't just appease him.
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: She tries to fight back. She makes a break for
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: the side door leading to the garage.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: She wants to let the dog out right.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, hoping to release her German shepherd. But Ernest is
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: physically much larger and he overpowers her. Then he leverages
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: the ultimate trump card, the sleeping toddler on the couch.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: He threatens the child, so just to protect her granddaughter,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Linda complies. She actually begs to be moved into the small,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: locked utility room off.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: The kitchen, just so the child won't wake up and
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: witness what's about to happen.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: It is heartbreaking, and that brings us to a fifteen
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: minute window of sheer agony. She is locked in that room,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: He cuts off her clothes. He sexually assaults her using
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: various objects he finds nearby. It is just horrific, but
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Linda is looking for any opening. She actually manages to
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: push him down at one point, that is when he
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: pulls out the handgun, points it directly at her head and.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Pulls the trigger.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: But the bullet misses.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, it zips right past her head and lodges in
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: the drywall. He fires again, but this time just a click,
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: just to click. The gun jams, and we find out
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: later it jammed because he literally loaded it with the
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: wrong ammunition.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: Such a massive stroke of luck.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable luck. But in that split second, instead of panicking
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: or retreating, he grabs her by the head and slices
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: her throat with the hunting.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: Knife, which brings us right back to the scene we
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: started with the sheer luck of a jammed gun combined
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: with the unimaginable grid of a survivor who plays dead,
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: endures being stabbed repeatedly to ensure she.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Is lifeless, and then writes his name in her own blood.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: And because she wrote that name, the police response is
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: incredibly fast. She manages to hit a panic button in
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: the house at eight twelve pm. First responders are there
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: by eight twenty pm.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: That is a wildly fast response time for a rural area.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: And while she is being airlifted to a trauma center
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: in Louisville, the local sheriff calls Ernest's landline, because remember,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: he lives just one minute down the road, right.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: So Ernest steps out of his house into the glaring
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: spotlight of a police cruiser around nine zero zero pm.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: The deputies note that he smells strongly of alcohol, but
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: he is coherent.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: And he already has an alibi ready, Oh yeah.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: He claims his wife is at a dog show two
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: hours away.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Now, if you listen to the interrogation audio from the
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Kentucky State Police, which happens at one point thirty five
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: in the morning, it is deeply, deeply disturbing.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: He's so cold, He's so cold.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: At first, he completely denies being at Linda's house at all.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Then when the detective mentions that another neighbor actually saw
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: him on the porch, he smoothly pivots.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: He doesn't even skip a beat, not at all.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: He just admits, oh right, I did go over to
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: talk about a boat dock, but her husband wasn't home,
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: so I left.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: Because he has absolutely no idea that Linda survived none.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Or that her blood is currently on the wall spelling
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: his name.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: It is a total showcase of pathological denial. He truly
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: believes he has controlled the narrative. But the part of
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: the transcript that really defies belief is when he engages
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: in this bizarre semantic debate with the detectives over the
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: legal definition of sexual assault.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, this blew my mind. I read this transcript three
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: times because it makes no sense. He literally argues that
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: because he hadn't taken his ed medication you know, Levitra,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: he was physically incapable of sexual assault.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: He just completely ignores the brutal trauma he inflicted using
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: the objects in the room.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's sitting in a police station with the
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: victim's blood literally on his shoe, aruwing semantics like a
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: lawyer debating a parking ticket. Does he actually think he
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: is outsmarting the physical evidence here.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: In a twisted way? Yes, he does. This is a
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: psychological defense mechanism known as compartmentalization, and it is heavily
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: fueled by the arrogance of control.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Arrogance is definitely the right word.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: Offenders like this rely so heavily on gas lighting their
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: victims in their families that they begin to believe their
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: own reality distortion field, even when they are backed into
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: a corner by law enforcement. He thinks, if he can
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: just win a technical argument about the clinical definition of
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: a word, the horrific reality of the violent crime will
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: just somehow vanish.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: But the physical evidence isn't going anywhere. Back at his house,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: investigators find a mountain of it. They find the jammed
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: point two to two pallaber handgun hidden in his basement.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: Toolbox, complete with the wrong amma.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Yep, the wrong amma, which perfectly matches the bullet lodged
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: in Linda's wall. They find bloody sandals with the tread
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: pattern perfectly matching a footprint. At the crime scene, they
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: find the bloody hunting knife, zip ties identical to the
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: ones used on Linda, and a green rope tied into
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: a noose.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: The forensic evidence is absolutely irrefutable, and it inevitably leads
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: to his indictment hearing later in two thousand and eight.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: But here is where the narrative shifts from a localized
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: tragedy into something much broader and darker.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Linda is still recovering from a massive nineteen hour surgery
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: at this point, so she obviously cannot attend this preliminary hearing.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Her father in.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Law goes instead. Right, he sits down in the courtroom
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: gallery right behind a stranger. They strike up a quiet conversation,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: and the stranger reveals why he is sitting there. He
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: tells Linda's father in law that he believes this man
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: in handcuffs, Ernest Pine, murdered his daughter in law sixteen
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: years ago.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: That revelation completely shatters the initial profile of the crime.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: You go from looking at a shocking, seemingly isolated incident
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: of a neighbor snapping to staring at a timeline that
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: suggests a highly experienced serial predator.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it changes everything.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: To understand why this stranger is so certain Ernest is
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: a killer, you have to look at how geography and
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: opportunity collided more than a decade earlier in a town
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: called Elizabethtown.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Let's look at that.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: It is January eighth, nineteen ninety two. Elizabethtown, Kentucky is
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: about an hour's drive away from Rough River Lake. We
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: have twenty nine year old Elena Sanchez Hawkins, a mother
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: of two. At seven in the morning, she waves her
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: eight year old off to the school bus.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: Totally normal morning, totally normal.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Her husband calls to check in shortly after, and everything
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: is fine. But a couple of hours later he calls back.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: The phone rings and rings until his three year old
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: son finally answers and says two words, mama's bleeding.
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: It is so chilling. Elena's throat had been slit from
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: ear to ear. She was bound not with zip ties
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: this time, but with a window blind cord, and the
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: little three year old had survived by hiding silently inside
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: a toy box.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: The physical and methodological parallels between these two attacks are terrifying.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: They really are.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Both women were petite, tan and dark haired. Both were
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: attacked in their own homes during the daytime, which takes.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: An incredible level of predatory boldness.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: By the way it does. Both had their throats cut
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: from ear to ear, and both had very young children
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: present in the home at the exact time of the attack.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: And when you start mapping out the geographic data points,
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: the circumstantial web tightened significantly. In nineteen ninety two, Ernest
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Pine lived just five miles away from Elena's house.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: The timeline fits perfectly too. Ernest worked in night shift
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: at a nearby break factory. We know from sources he
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: had a daytime drinking problem that he aggressively hid from
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: his family.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: Right he had to keep it a secret.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Now, Elizabeth Kown was a dry county. Back then, you
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: couldn't legally buy alcohol. To get his daytime drinks, he
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: had to drive to the neighboring wet town of Boston, Kentucky.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: His driving right would have taken him directly past Elena's
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: house during the exact window of her murder, between seven
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: point and ten zero am.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: Then U factor in the vehicles. During the original nineteen
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: ninety two investigation, police set up roadblocks and found a
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: witness who clearly saw a black Nissan dap and pickup
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: truck parked in Alena's driveway that morning.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: And what did Ernest drive?
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: Well, what had Ernest just bought for his teenage daughter
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: a tan Chevy S ten pickup truck. At a quick
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: glance in the early morning winter light, the boxy body
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: styles of those two small trucks are virtually indistinguishable to
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: a passing.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Witness and it gets even more targeted. Ernest and his
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: wife played in a praise band at a local megachurch.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: That specific church was just two and a half miles
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: from the gas station where Elena worked night shifts.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: That is way too close.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: And Elena's family recalled that in the weeks leading up
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: to her murder, a creepy man would come to the
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: gas station and just stare at her through the glass booth.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: He never spoke, he just stared. It freaked her out
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: so much she would regularly call her husband to come
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: down and stand with her.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: So you have striking physical summi ladies and the victims,
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: identical methodologies in the violence, extremely tight geographic proximity, and
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: a suspect with an established window of opportunity that perfectly
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: aligns with the timeline of the murder.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Here is where it gets really interesting. We have all
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: these circumstantial coincidences and identicalms. But is this a proven
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: serial predator pattern or does a terrifying web of circumstantial coincidences?
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Because if he.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Was operating like this in nineteen ninety two, how on
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: earth did he slip through the cracks for sixteen years?
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Why wasn't his file pulled the second another woman had
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: her throat slashed an hour away.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: If we connect this to the bigger picture of law
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: enforcement in the early nineteen nineties, you have to understand
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: the concept of investigative silos.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Investigative silos.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, before digitized centralized criminal databases existed, police departments in
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: different counties rarely cross referenced their cases effectively. It wasn't
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: like googling a name today. It was like trying to
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: find a matching fingerprint by driving to a different library
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: in every county and asking the local librarian to physically
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: flip through a card catalog.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: That sounds impossible, It basically was.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: If a predator committed a crime and then just quietly
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: moved a Futurreis stictions over, they essentially became a ghost.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: There was no computer algorithm automatically flagging and matching mo
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: cross county.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Lines, so he just moves an hour away to rough
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: River Lake, plays the quiet family man building boat docks,
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: and no one is the wiser until he finally makes
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: a mistake with the wrong ammunition.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight exactly.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: But the legal aftermath of that two thousand and eight
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: attack is where the systemic flaws in our justice system
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: really become apparent to the victims.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Let's break that down because this is infuriating. In two
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: thousand and nine, Ernest realizes he cannot beat the blood
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: evidence or the jammed gun, so he takes a plea
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: deal to avoid a jury trial. He gets slacked with
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: multiple brutal charges, but the judge allows him to serve
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: the sentences concurrently.
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: And for anyone unfamiliar with the mechanics of sentencing, we
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: really need to contrast concurrent versus consecutive sentences. Right, Consecutive
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: means you serve the time for crime, and then the
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: time for crime be begins they stack up. Concurrent means
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: you serve them all at the exact same time. Sectively
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: functions as a bulk discount on violent crime. The longest
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: single sentence absorbs all the other crimes. So his multiple
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: charges were basically rolled into a single twenty year sentence.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: But he didn't even serve twenty years under Kentucky law.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: He was granted early parole in August twenty twenty five.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: He served only seventeen years. How does the math even
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: work on that?
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: It comes down to what's known as an eighty five
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: percent law. In many states, violent offenders are required by
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: statute to serve at least eighty five percent of their
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: sentence before they are even eligible to meet with the
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: parole board.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Oh isso, so eighty five.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: Percent of twenty years is exactly seventeen years. Once he
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: hit that absolute minimum threshold, he was granted release and
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: a major part of the rationale for demonstrating his good
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: behavior and rehabilitation. He reportedly led Bible studies and Sunday
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: school in the prison chapel.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: Which feels like such a massive slap.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: In the face. It is a well documented manipulation tactic.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: Psychopathic predators are often highly adaptable within structured, bureaucratic environments
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: like prisons. They know exactly which levers to pull, like
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: leading a Bible study, to project a facade of rehabilitation
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: and successfully game the parole board system.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Elena's nineteen ninety two cold case remains in complete limbo.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: In two thousand and four, the police actually stopped testing
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: the DNA from her crime scene. They claimed they didn't
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: want to destroy the tiny sample they had left, and.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: There is a scientific reason for that, but it is
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: a tragic one. Older DNA testing methods from the nineties,
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: like RFLP testing, required relatively massive biological samples, and the
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: testing process fundamentally destroyed the sample.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Once it's gone, it's gone exactly.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: Modern PCR testing, on the other hand, can amplify microscopic
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: amounts of DNA without destroying the entirety of the evidence.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: The tragedy is that her family is still caught in
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: a bureaucratic holding pattern. Today, they just get the standard answer.
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: We're waiting for better technology. They have never received official
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: confirmation on whether Ernest's DNA was ever actually compared to
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: the microscopic sample from nineteen ninety two.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: And for Linda, the survivor of the two thousand attack,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: the sheer act of surviving came with a cost that
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: is hard to fathom. People think that when the attacker
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: goes to jail, the story neatly ends, but the toll
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: on the survivor is lifelong, absolutely lifelong. Linda had a
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars medical lean legally placed
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: on her home just to cover the nineteen hour emergency
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: surgery and the seventeen pints of blood she required to survive.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: It took her husband ten grueling years to pay that off.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: This raises an important question about how we define justice.
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: While Linda's family is being financially drained by the direct
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: results of his violent actions, Ernest was actively protecting his assets. Wait, how,
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: while awaiting his civil liabilities from prison, he and his
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: wife strategically divorced. His assets were transferred to her, entirely
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: shielding them from Linda's lawsuits. Furthermore, his work mention was
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: legally protected from civil seizure. So Linda is left with
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: a quarter of a million dollars in medical debt, and
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: the man who slit her throat keeps his nest egg
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: completely safe.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: So what does this all mean? The emotional toll is
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: just as devastating, if not worse. Linda's husband suffered a
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: massive stress induced stroke in twenty thirteen, which doctors directly
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: attributed to the constant, crushing anxiety of the aftermath and
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: the financial ruin.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: It destroys the whole family.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: To this day, Linda cannot be left alone in a house.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: She requires constant companionship just to feel a baseline level
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: of safety, and recently at a no contact order hearing
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: following his parole. Linda's family stated that Ernest showed absolutely
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: zero remorse. He barely even acknowledged the judge's instructions. It
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: feels like the justice system basically gave him a discount
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: for failing to kill her. How does a man get
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: years shaved off a sentence for attempted murder just because
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: his victim was miraculously strong enough to hold her own
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: neck together and survive.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: It highlights a deeply uncomfortable reality about legal design. The
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: judicial system often mathematically punishes the ultimate outcome rather than
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: the underlying intent. Interesting, his intent was entirely, undeniably lethal.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: He brought a gun, he brought zip ties, and he
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: slit her throat. He did everything in his power to
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: end her life. Her survival is a testament to her
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: incredible biological resilience and willpower, not a mitigating factor for
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: his cruelty. Yet mathematically, because she didn't die, the system
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: treats it as the latter, resulting in a lighter charge
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: and an earlier release.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the core of why we are
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: discussing this deep dive today. We have to recognize the
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: incredible resilience of Linda. She fought back against a monster.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: She played dead when she had to, and she made
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: absolutely sure that if she was going to die on
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: that floor, the world would know exactly who took her life.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Because of her sheer grit, a highly dangerous man was named,
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: caught and taken off the streets for seventeen years.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: And on the other side of this tragedy, you have
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: the ongoing, quiet perseverance of Elena's son, who is just
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: three years old when he found his mother bleeding. He
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: continues to fight every single day, navigating bureaucratic red tape,
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: demanding justice for a cold case that has haunted his
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: family for over three decades.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: These files remind us that true crime isn't a puzzle
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: to be solved for entertainment. It is about the very real,
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: lifelong aftermath that victims and their families endure. It is
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: the crushing medical bills that take a decade of labor
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: to pay off. It is the hypervigilance of never ever
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: being able to sit in a living room alone again.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: It is the agonizing silence of a cold case that
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: a police department won't fully explain to a grieving sun exactly.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: And that is why it is so important for you
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: to pay attention to the mechanics of these cases, to
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: look at the legal loopholes like concurrent sentencing and asset
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: shielding that consistently favor the perpetrators, and to demand better
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: accountability for cold cases in our own communities. We can't
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: just look the other way when the system mathematically fails
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: the victims.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: Knowledge really is our best tool here. Understanding how predators
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: exploit social norms to blend in and deeply understanding how
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: the legal system processes them empowers us to ask the
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: right questions when things just don't add up.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: As we wrap up today, I want to leave you
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: with a chilling thought to moll over on your own.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: We know about Ernest Pine today for two very specific reasons,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: a single plea deal to avoid a jury, and a
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: stroke of pure luck where he loaded the wrong ammunition
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: into a point two to two caliber handgun, causing it
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: to jam. If that gun had fired, he might have
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: simply walked back across the street, washed his hands, and
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: gone back to being the quiet neighbor who builds boat docks.
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: You would have just faded back into normal life, right.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: But think about this, If it was that easy for
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: a predator to compartmentalize his life and hide in plain
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: sight in a tight knit community in nineteen nineties and
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: two thousands. Imagine how much easier it is today.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: With the rise of.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Digital anonymity, remote work, and increasingly isolated neighborhoods. The investigative
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: silos aren't just between police departments anymore. They exist between
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: the very houses on our own streets. So you have
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: to wonder, as our lives have become more disconnected, how
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: many masks of normalcy are going completely unchecked right next door.